E-commerce, which generally refers to commercial activities on-line, is an area that is rapidly increasing in popularity as more and more customers purchase consumer items from Web sites rather visit physical stores. There are several e-commerce Web sites that are devoted to commercial activities. For example, virtual stores such as Amazon™ have sophisticated Web sites that offer a wide variety of products for sale to consumers. Other Web sites provide more limited sets of specialty items and still others cater to business customers as opposed to general consumers. Some Web-based stores have physical world counterparts, but many do not. Irrespective of whether the Web-based stores sell to consumers or business or whether they are extensions of physical world stores or not, or whether they are small businesses offering services to local communities, virtually all Web-based store owners have an interest in understanding who is visiting their Web site and what activities those visitors are engaged in during such visits.
This need for information regarding Web site visitors has spawned the industry of Web analytics. Broadly speaking, Web analytics may be regarded as the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data for purposes of understanding Web site usage and visitor behavior. Such analytics are also used in connection with business and market research. Many providers, such as Google™ and others, offer this kind of analytical information to their subscribers in connection with their web sites
In particular, on-site Web analytics provide a Web site owner/operator with information regarding actual Web site visitor activities, but usually this is provided in the form of a compilation of historical information over various time periods/visits.
While somewhat useful, historical information provides only an after-the-fact view of visitor behaviors and has limited benefit for the Web site owner/operator. However, unlike real world physical stores, the Web site owner (or merchant) providing goods and services on-line cannot interact with customers in real time, and provide customer support to offer a personalized or customized shopping experience. While some on-line stores may have an on-line customer support chat feature, this requires the consumer to initiate a “call” with the merchant. Many potential buyers will never do so and the result, from the merchant's standpoint, is lost sales.
Also, a merchant of a real world store has the ability to monitor the customers in his store and provide assistance or advice if it appears a customer may leave the premises without making a purchase. Traditional e-commerce merchants do not have this kind of advantage.
Further, most solutions for customer support or customer communications involve a solution on a desktop, requiring support agents to be always at their computers.
Further, solutions also do not differentiate across different visitors, requiring a large set of agents in order to communicate with all/most of the visitors.
While the invention is described with reference to the above drawings, the drawings are intended to be illustrative, and the invention contemplates other embodiments within the spirit of the invention.